Hello!
Well remember those cool days when you realised you can play B Harmonic Minor over E Harmonic Minor??
Look no further because the uber cool
Harmonic Minor scale has more to offer us still..
For too long people only used it sound like Bach or Yngwie without understanding why back in the 14th century it was classed (and still is in classical music) as the "primary" minor scale, with the snubbed and shunned "natural minor" relegated to recorder players and beginners..
So why did the classic greats use the Harmonic? Well simply because it was the most flexible scale (in an unaltered state) that existed, this may be still true today, but why is it so flexible its just a minor scale?
The phrase "its just a minor scale" shows epic musical ignorance. The Harmonic Minor is a true rare beast as it contains some musical oddities exploited by the great composers/song writers even today.
For example the harmonic minor contains Major scale sounding
chord progression in fact quite a few pop songs have been written in harmonic minor with nobody even knowing it because people think of it only in terms of the 2nd to tonic to major seventh sound.
If you look at E harmonic minor you can play a genuine unaltered note Major scale sounding progression like C Em B Am, all nice and happy but there is far more depth than just a "darkness and light" sound scape, lets look deeper at the notes and chords.
Classically the note are:
E F# G A B C D# (too lazy to use flats!)
Thus the chords can be named thus:
Em F# Dim G+ Am B C D# Dim
But if we look closer at the scale we find something really rare in the scale. We find TWO duality chords. A duality chord is one where a single chord can be two different triad types with the same root using UNALTERED notes from the scale. If we look at our E harmonic minor example we see the two DUALITY chords start on the notes A (IV) and C (VI).
If we analyse the scale this means we can have Am AND A Dim, as well as C Major 7 AND C Dim in the same unaltered key!!
Because Am need A C and E (which we have) and A Dim needs A C D# (which we also have). C Major 7 needs C E G B (which we have) and C Dim needs C D# F# (which we also have).
This leads the musician into really cool mood changing chords without changing key. So if we took a nice happy Major sounding chord progression like: C Am B Em we could get all deep and evil by using one or more DUALITY chords to infere a change of key to a nasty Minor thus:
C Am B Em then C Em B A Dim Em F# Dim etc...
And thats just a glimpse into the untouch world of the Harmonic Minor scale and don't forget you can flip your top with the even more astounding Harmonic MAJOR scale!!
Until next time rock on!!
